Search

May 26, 2005

let's face the music and dance

Firstly let's thank Anne for this interlude, which has taken me most agreeably from less pleasant activities. Six questions to answer, five people to pass them on to. Sounds reasonable enough...!!They're in small print because you really shouldn't get me started on music, my inner Cameron Crowe should just stay right where he is.

The person who passed the baton to you.

Anne of Fernham ( which is sounding Anglo-Norman to me this evening, but she’s not. Well, not as far as I know, anyway.)

Total volume of music files on your computer.

Not sure actually – I’m not into downloading, there have to be some of us around to keep Malvolio alive and kicking you know.

The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

That is a very good question, I think it could have been Return of the Grievous Angel, a tribute album to Gram Parsons by the likes of Lucinda Williams, Wilco, Emmylou Harris and Beck. Surprisingly, wonderfully good, check out the 'noughties version of ‘Las Vegas’. UP LOUD.

Song playing at the moment of writing.

If music is playing I prefer to listen to it or engage with it in some 'meaningful' way – that means foxtrot, jig about in an unseemly fashion, or sing along. I’m a failed muso, really, writing is my mistress as Bud might say. If it's playing while I'm writing I don't hear it - and if it's playing when I'm cleaning the shower, God help the shower because I won't.

Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

I used to sing a lot, ( in church for God’s sake – literally), and would love a dollar for every time I sang Paul Stookey’s 'Wedding Song' in the 70s and early 80s. Now I am really embarrassed as I find that he would have liked a dollar too – sorry Paul, we sang for peanuts. Treely ruly. Once I received a makeup mirror as payment for my services ( yep, we were that bad).

So the concept of musical favourites, like books, is pretty alien to me really. How does one choose?

One of the only real tear-jerker arias I know is ‘Ebben, lo cantando’ from Catalani’s opera, La Wally. We have the music in a collection of art songs in the house - needless to say, I’m not in training right now. But it is an aria that will never be sung professionally completely in character, shall we say – the speaker is a 15 year old ‘wild child’ who is running away from home. And the opera contains an avalanche, which makes it difficult to stage as well.Truly a corker. Time I bought the ‘Diva’ soundtrack, as Wilhelmina Wiggins-Fernandez does not seem to have released it in any other collections. “O mio madre..”

I love dancing, have been known to shuffle my shoes in clothing stores, no less, and have a tape of special warmup tunes for cold days ( or shower -cleaning ones) – favourite jives include Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, James ‘Sit Down’ and The Vines ‘Gotta Get OuttatheWay’.

I really enjoy 'Return of the Grievous Angel,' (preferably Gram and Emmylou), I have to say, that’s a damn good tune.

That man on the radio won’t leave me alone…

Shit, man, that’s five already – see what I mean? That’s impossible, I could write about music all night. Did I mention Schumann’s Dichterliebe op. 42? Jimmy and Robert ‘Unledded’ playing “Since I’ve Been Loving You” with an orchestra? Radiohead , Polly Harvey (yup, seen them both live)?? That chorus from The Gondoliers, ‘Then away they go to an island fair, That lies in a southern sea…’ Oh, and did I mention that our high school’s Duke of Plaza Toro is now a political analyst? And that my personal requests for funeral music include the Beatles 'Blackbird' and Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Lennie'? Ah, well, whatever, never mind...